Wildlife and watersheds
Superando Barreras para la Reducción del Riesgo Comunitario ante Incendios Forestales
October 2025
Written by Lexi Lor, Intern, Coalition & Collaboratives
As the fire season in the West ramps up with many wildfires currently burning, I’ve caught myself reflecting on how fire has not only reshaped my life as a Colorado native, but also my career trajectory as a current college student. I was 18 years old, a fresh high school graduate going into my first semester of college in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when Colorado’s worst fire season exploded. I watched for six months as the Pine Gulch, East Troublesome, and Cameron Peak Fires, Colorado’s three biggest fires, raged on and consumed many of the areas that have shaped my outdoors experiences. A year later in December 2021, I watched as the Marshall Fire ravaged a community that I held dear to my heart.
These wildfires positioned me to ask myself questions about where I saw myself in the future and in the face of these devastating experiences. As a student at the Metropolitan State University (MSU) Denver with a focus on water studies, my time with COCO has brought up a few new questions: Wildfire impacts on our communities and terrestrial ecosystems are very openly discussed, but what about our aquatic ecosystems?
A watershed is an area of land where all the water drains into one common water body, such as a lake, river, or ocean. Each watershed has its own unique combination of characteristics, which in turn will impact their responses to fire and have differing post-fire resilience. With a couple of exceptions, Colorado is a headwater state, meaning all of its rivers begin in the Rocky Mountains and flow out of the state. As such, its mountain watersheds are vital to the nation’s freshwater supplies. The state’s river systems serve its own residents, but also serve those in 18 other states. The health of these watersheds is vital, especially in a time where water rights are becoming an issue that is hotly contested in the West.
Post-Wildfire, there are major concerns around landslides and flooding in burnscars. When most or all vegetation are destroyed, fire creates major impacts on soil health. Severe fire changes soil from hydrophilic to hydrophobic, meaning that rather than absorbing water when rain falls or snowpack melts, water will flow across the surface. Vegetation loss means there are no plant roots to hold the ground together which causes loose soil to flow downhill into waterways. Excess sediment in our waterways pollute them and pose a new set of challenges for water treatment making it a more difficult process that many municipalities may not be prepared for. Wildfires impact the quantity and quality of water resources.
During active burning, ash and other contaminants settle in waterways, and post-fire, runoff carries not only sediment but the ash and contaminants that have settled on the soil.
Wildfires have many more impacts on watersheds and aquatic ecosystems. Normal and healthy aquatic ecosystems emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb since the systems receive carbon from other neighboring sources. However, a study conducted by the University of California San Diego is showing a change in this relationship. Burned plant materials allow aquatic ecosystems to absorb more carbon dioxide, but as burned plant materials increase, the ability to absorb carbon decreases and leads to more release into the atmosphere. Researchers have concluded that “More frequent and intense wildfires may alter the capacity of aquatic systems to store, transform and exchange carbon with the atmosphere.”
Maintaining healthy watersheds terrestrially is so important to combat the frequency and severity of wildfires. The resilience of our watersheds is the definition of our continued sources of water for agricultural, personal, and recreational uses. I hope to continue to see more research done on the impacts fire has on our waterways and aquatic ecosystems as I finish out my education and dive into my career. The understanding of the resilience and recovery of our aquatic ecosystems is detrimental to thriving communities who have been impacted and overall ecosystem health in our forests.
Reflecting on the fires, not just here, but across the world, that have impacted me in some way, it’s clear they have done more than leave scars on the landscapes they ravaged. They have ignited a passion in me to understand the delicate systems that we rely on to sustain life and protect them. From the smoke filled skies of my first semester in college to the work I do now exploring watershed health, wildfire will remain a central point of my journey. As I move forward in my education and career, I carry with me the knowledge I have gained with COCO and a determination to deepen our knowledge on how fire not only impacts the land we see, but the vital watersheds and aquatic ecosystems we often overlook. The understanding of these connections are key to building resilience in our global communities and the ecosystems we all know and love. I am determined to be a part of the solution as my knowledge on watershed health, wildfires, and sustainability deepen through my experiences, both personal and professional.
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